There is a discrete difference between undergraduate and graduate study, especialyl doctoral study, which is that the latter is focused on educating you to be able to formulate, tackle, and solve open-ended HARD problems through research. That is different than in undergraduate studies, which provide an introduction to and the fundamentals of your chosen field in a primarily classroom-based format.

So if graduate study is about tackling open-ended problems through research, how can we (in admissions) figure out if (1) are interested and (2) capable of such research? That’s where undergraduate research experience comes in. It tells us that you’ve had exposure to the kind of tough open-ended problems you are likely to encounter as a doctoral student, and that you liked that mode of inquiry enough to pursue it further.

So go out and do some research!

As a side note, choir, sports, student government, etc. are (almost) never going to help you get into a doctoral program. Do activities as an undergraduate because they interest you; don’t do them to improve your application to graduate school…they don’t matter. (I did one or two activities as an undergraduate, and continue to do pottery…these things are indeed helpful for keeping your sanity, so don’t think they don’t have value).

Also, know that fewer deep research experiences are much more instructive than many 1-term research experiences. What we are looking for is evidence that you undertook independent research. I have had undergraduates in my lab who worked with a graduate student for one term and did exactly what was told of them. I have also had (a few) undergraduates in my lab who undertook partially or fully independent projects, where they solved the problems that arose in the course of any research project. The latter is what you should be attempting to do (assuming you are early enough in your studies that you have time to do this). And it is difficult to get to that stage in one semester. So find a lab you like. Stick around. When the opportunity arises, innovate, solve problems, think up better ways to get from here to there. Then communicate that you did so in your application, and your advisor will do the same. That’s what we’re looking for. And that’s what you should be looking for. Because if you really don’t like research, then you are not going to be happy in graduate school, and, for your own sake, you should choose another path.

Graduate admissions here is done somewhat differently than at (some) other places. You don’t apply to a particular faculty member’s group…you apply to the department. I get many emails every year from students who (1) ask if they can do a PhD in my group or (2) ask me if they are a good candidate for admissions. As most of those people have found out, I almost never reply. But it’s not because I’m mean or evil. It’s because graduate admissions is carried out by a committee of 10’s of people, who join together to decide on the admitted student pool. So sending me an email is not useful because (1) I can’t admit you to my research group and (2) I can’t admit you to the department. So, I usually forward those emails to the Graduate Office, which sends some sort of response (I presume).

As a department, we typically don’t publicly announce who serves on admissions, to avoid encouraging emails of the sort described above. Now you know that I serve on graduate admissions. Please don’t bombard me with emails. I won’t respond, and I’ll be much more reticent about sharing information in the future.

What do we look for in graduate students? Research ability, technical aptitude, etc. You already know all of this. The challenge (from our point of view) is that we need to do the inverse problem of inferring (and predicting) a student’s ability/potential from a sparse data set (aka the application). The easier you make that job for us, the better. So don’t try to hide stuff. There are people who have been on admissions for 30 yrs, and they’ve seen everything. If you had a bad semester, just tell us (having your academic advisor mention it in a rec is one approach). If you had a research experience that went sour, tell us (but don’t badmouth your former advisor…that never looks good when applying for ANY position). Make it easy for us to discern your research experiences, and exactly what you did in them. And, please, don’t be longwinded in your essay. There’s no character limit for the essay (as far as I know), but I have never seen an overly long essay that helped someone. Keep those essays to the same length as you use for other schools.

We receive many applications each year, and each one is individually assessed. There’s no magic formula. We look at everyone as individuals, which is something you’ll notice if you eventually come here for study. We want the best students, we try awfully hard to find them, and then we try our best to recruit them.

So good luck, and let me know if there are particular topics you’d like for me to comment on in upcoming posts.